Objectives & Goals Are Dumb

Objectives and goals are dumb, so I am letting go of all of them. Goals are dependent upon actions that are unintentional and promote climbing a ladder in the corporate world. Objectives tend to describe your engagement for a specific goal; to get a job and make money. I’m not allergic to money, but I am more intentional with it. I don’t need a six figure job to live in the lap of luxury. I don’t need a high end car because I am perfectly content with my ten year old Subaru. I don’t need to have an expensive wardrobe to impress others, because I have what I need to be presentable in my own way. I don’t need that multi-million dollar home because I’d be perfectly happy with a small apartment. This all comes from my long-term values as a minimalist. So instead of having particular goals and objectives, I’m replacing those with something more personal.

Objectives Aren’t Meaningful

Every time I look at resume examples, there it is. That top line with an obtrusive sentence of what your objective could be. It’s just an example, but what is my objective? Does it need to be an objective? Sure, we all want to have a position to contribute and collaborate with a team of like minded people in a business oriented establishment to climb the corporate ladder. Isn’t that what everyone is looking for in any profession? Out of many resumes that I have seen from colleagues, friends, and family, the objective pretty much said the same thing and in my eyes it said to me, “hey, look at me! I want a job! I’m a team player and can get things done!” The word objective just says to me that you have your eye on a goal and since I let go of goals, I follow a path. I’m not like a regular job hunter. I don’t intent to climb a corporate ladder. I intend on following a path that I feel is best for me to grow into and progress. Rather than moving up using a stationary objective that could run me into stagnation, I intend to follow a path through.

My revolutionary answer to the objective line of a resume, although it could be a little excessive, is to use Passion, Progression, and Mission. With your passions, you progress to support your mission. Now, open up your resume and delete that line right off your resume. It’s not adding any valuable information, and it’s good to start off with a fresh idea that will receive more open eyes. It’s different in execution, but it gives the candidate a personal touch that they have values just like everyone else.

passion

I think that taking on your passions in a professional sense is a really great way to center yourself into a great role. I have learned from another blog that when someone asks you what you do, you should always avoid the social economic order of things. I would ask myself the same question. What do I do?

You must ask yourself what passions you have that you are willing to progress on, or better yet, what are the passions you have discovered through your career that has aligned with your long-term values? I’m not talking about just any passions. What are some of your passions that you can use in your work life but still not interfere with your personal life?

I try to use the my passions for art, design, writing, and creativity as my main venue. I have been a natural creative and by using some of my passions, I have been eeking back into design more, and more after almost two years of hiatus. Having over 20 years in freelancing, and more than 6 years in a professional setting with many different kinds of clients has helped support this over that span of time.

After a two year hiatus from design to recalibrate my mindset and taking back my passions, I have learned to divide them in a certain way that it wouldn’t interfere with what I love. In my free time, I’m designing more artistic and personal designs that expand my mind a little. It’s personalized for me to experiment. I write everyday for a couple of hours to vent out new experiences and ideas. When it comes to being on the clock, I can use some of those experiences for different projects that I work on, but still hold on to the same values of keeping my personal life separate from my work life, and vice versa.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

— Oscar Wilde

Progression

Progress isn’t something that is defined by your productivity. It’s a way of acknowledging that you want to improve and expand yourself; to go above and beyond the path you choose to walk.

Our passions are always progressing because we are always performing short-term actions related to our passions. Our passions drive us to progress in them by wanting to discover more beyond their bounds, to integrate them into our lives, and to be more meaningful and mindful about those passions.

Oscar Wilde said it best that, “Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.”

Your passions will not grow unless you progress them into something that can be the fruit of your contentment. A passion that can grow and still be both part of your enjoyment in the office and in the home is a step down the right path.

Mission

A mission is not an objective, it’s a path you choose to walk that creates meaning to you, and plays a role in change that are based on the five core values of minimalism (growth, relationships, contribution, passion, and health. I will dive deeper into each of these in a later post. We need to take into consideration that in order for us to walk a healthy path, we must utilize our passions to obtain growth through contribution with the relationships we have. It creates a vicious circle because those relationships maintains a healthy path to support your mission.

When writing your mission, make it meaningful and mindful based on the five core values, don’t make it a goal or objective. Make it a foundational idea of the path your are wanting to take. Making it sound like a goal or objective will make it sound generic and unintentional. I always describe my mission to not point in any specific direction. Everyone has a mission that leads into a different direction and is never always the same. Just take into consideration that when describing your mission, there is never going to be an end to it. Your mission is infinite with infinite paths to an infinite future.

Using this idea, will not only give you the starting line for your path, but it will help you engage more mindfully in the future where there will be obstacles at every turn. You will find that you have veered off course a little, but make sure that you don’t take any shortcuts.